English Language and Literature Commons^™

Finding Place For Printing, Ian Duncan

Tutor's Column

This column examines the benfits and drawbacks of printed papers and digital essays in tutoring scenarios. It considers their roles in the learning of students, and it suggests a compromise by finding the value of both mediums of writing.

Redefining Labels: The Session Is Ours For The Taking, Erica Snow

Tutor's Column

There is a wealth of resources available for any writing center tutor struggling with a particular aspect of sessions regarding the student, but equally important is for a tutor to receive adequate training on their own psyche in the tutoring experience. Through simple methods, this paper offers strategies for tutors to increase their own self-care and create a more positive outlook on tutoring experiences. Engaging these strategies in their own practice will equip tutors to better help the students, as well as encourage a healthier state of mind.

We Found Language In A Lonely Place: A Rumination Into Quieting The Fears Of El Students And Quieting Our Own Fears About Effectively Tutoring Them, Zoe Baldwin

Tutor's Column

This text shares the concern that many tutors face in effectively tutoring EL students by helping their confidence as writers, addressing their concerns, and helping them build long-term writing skills. The text will address what tutors can do in their tutoring sessions to help EL students with their writing concerns. There is discussion about some of the most common EL concerns such as grammar, or cohesion. These concerns are met with suggestions such as addressing grammar, talking about the ideas that the writer wants to convey, brainstorming ideas and getting them to write them down, and being mindful of how …

Escaping The Spiral: How Peer Tutoring Disrupts Perfectionistic Tendencies, Anne Schill

Tutor's Column

This column examines how the peer tutoring setting allows for both students and tutors to relinquish perfectionistic tendencies. Peer tutoring gives students permission to bring in imperfect work and realize such an action won’t cause the world to implode. It also teaches tutors to not expect themselves to know absolutely everything, but rather develop ways to get help with solutions. This column is part personal experience, part research. I provide my own experience as both a student and a tutor, as well as citing Rebecca Knight’s Harvard Business Review article, “How to Manage Your Perfectionism.” Perfectionistic expectations and cycles must …

How About You Give It A Try: Hands-On Tutoring Sessions, Mikayla Tobler

Tutor's Column

The idea of asking a student to practice a skill first occurred to me when I was tutoring a student with an essay where I noticed that the student consistently missed opportunities to include sensory imagery. Within that session, I explained sensory imagery and asked the student to practice applying it. The success I felt after watching the student improve during this session motivated me to try it in many more. I’ve found that this technique works best when a student feels unsure about what to work on with a tutor. The tutor can then go through the student’s work …

Preventing, Perceiving, And Post-Venting Suicide: A Guide For Teachers, For Their Students, Justin Vance

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

To aid teachers with intense time constraints, the following summary includes the bolded, most important points in the paper:

• Thank you for caring about your students; by doing more than just teaching your content, you will change lives ... and may save some.

• Teachers are not responsible for student suicide; we carry enough responsibility already.

• Genuine, assertive communication of confidence and support fosters the safe environment needed.

• Improvements to how we view and speak about suicide can help reshape how young people think about it.

• As young men lose what they care about in pursuit …

Redefining Ceremony And The Sacred: Short Stories From The Dinétah, Stacie S. Denetsosie

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This is a creative thesis comprised of three short stories centered on the experiences of three Navajo protagonists living on the Navajo reservation. The short stories fit within the field of Native American Literature and highlight issues of mortality, sexuality, and ceremony. The stories illustrate the experiences of modern-day Navajo youth grappling to understand how to connect traditional knowledge with modernity. The three stories featured within this thesis are offered as a way to understand these challenges. Each protagonist is faced with an issue of morality, sexuality, or ceremony, and each reach differing conclusions about these topics within their lives. …

More Than Writing: The Application Of The Writing Process, Logan Kelley

Tutor's Column

Beginning writers often struggle to apply the writing process. In order to help them understand this concept, it is helpful for tutors to draw connections with outside disciplines that the student is already familiar with. Most problem-solving approaches contain parallels with the writing process. Educational research shows that meaningful connections will help students apply difficult concepts. Tutors will best support beginning writers by helping them develop a consistent application of the writing process.

Teaching Issues Of Identity Through Multicultural Young Adult Literature, Emily M. Withers

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Despite changing demographics of high school classrooms, teaching practices and literature remain similar to decades-old practices focusing more on literary devices and symbolism than on topics relevant to the students. Many teachers don’t have the time to find new novels. And when they do find the texts, they are often at a loss for how to properly teach the novels. This thesis is a three-part paper advocating for teaching identity to high school students using a blend of classic literature and contemporary multicultural young adult literature. The first section focuses on personal experiences and research illustrating the need for more …

Fragmentary Memories: The Cultural Significance Of Famine Echoes In Dracula, Moira Hegarty

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This Plan B thesis explores the questions: What echoes of the 1845 Potato famine exist in Dracula and how do those echoes impact our understanding of the famine’s cultural impact? Dracula has been studied extensively both as an important example of gothic Victorian literature and as a chance to reclaim a native Irish author from the British. By looking at Dracula through the lens of Ireland’s 1845 Potato famine some of the structural and narrative oddities resolve themselves, such as Stoker’s decision to introduce so many opposing images and ideas to create a sense of uncertainty and rob the reader …

Adapting Environmental Ethics And Behaviors: Toward A Posthuman Rhetoric Of Community Engagement, Beth J. Shirley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

What persuades people one way or another to accept or deny climate change? More importantly, what persuades people to act on, ignore, or even be defiant of climate change? We would like to think that people are motivated when they hear the science explained clearly and when they are presented with a clear understanding of how their actions have a lasting impact. Yet the science on climate change has been made clear for some time, and doubt in climate change science is rampant (at least in the United States).

This dissertation seeks to answer these questions and develop a new …

Changing Access: Building A Culture Of Accessibility Within Normalized Technical Communication Practices, Sherena Huntsman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As a field intricately connected to human experience and interaction, technical and professional communication (TPC) is historically, ethically, and practically tooled to address issues of equality, diversity, and access. While these important issues have not always been the focal point of TPC, the recent turn toward social justice has scholars asking critical questions about how users access information, how specific design practices may privilege some and disenfranchise others, and how we can be more inclusive across our communication practices. In this dissertation, I argue that it is within reach of TPC to address the specific problem of access—the gap between …

Thylacine Dreams: The Vernacular Resurrection Of An Extinct Marsupial, Daisy M. Ahlstone

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis explores the folk resurrection of the thylacine through artwork and symbolic interaction. The thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, is a marsupial that suffered a government-sanctioned massacre leading to its extinction in 1936. The thylacine’s status as a hidden animal has inspired what folklorists call “ostensive practice”; people not only actively seek out the thylacine in the wilderness of Tasmania today and share their sightings online, but they have also incorporated the thylacine as a symbol of hope and perseverance into various forms of folk art.

There have been upwards of five thousand documented sightings of the …

The Long Horizon, Tiffany Smith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The idea for my thesis stemmed from a braided essay I wrote for a creative writing class. I didn’t initially plan on expanding my class essay into a memoir, but I have discovered that oftentimes the story finds us rather than the other way around. Using the memoir form allowed me to bridge quite naturally the subjects of grief and landscape by giving me space to reflect on a turbulent period in my life and arrive at some sort of conclusion. While I could see the importance of the natural world in my life, I didn’t realize at first how …

The Red Front Door, A Memoir, Camila B. Sanabria

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This is a creative thesis that contains two components: 1) a critical introduction that defends the representation of mixed-status families and deportation narratives, and 2) a memoir that depicts my experience with deportation and as a member of a mixed-status family. The second component of this thesis will consist of the first four chapters of my memoir, with the remaining chapters to be completed post-graduation. These chapters take place the years before my parents’ deportation and the year immediately after. The memoir is a coming-of-age story that explores my ethnic identity, along with themes such as insider versus outsider. This …

London Stage Database, Mattie Burkert, Will Daland, Emma Hallock, Todd Hugie, Lauren Liebe, Derek Miller, Dustin Olson, Ben R. Schneider Jr.

Browse all Datasets

Recovered files, and documents and archival data used to revitalize the London Stage Information Bank, which was completed in the 1970s but had become technologically obsolete.

Contents:

--Greene_2018_SITAR_3.5in_floppy: Files with this prepending them are program files for the SITAR word processing program, retrieved by Mattie Burkert in 2018 from a 3.5-inch floppy disk sent to her via mail by John Greene, who received it from Ben Schneider in or around 1990.

--Greene_2018_SITAR_5.5in_floppy: Files with this prepending them are program files for the SITAR word processing program, retrieved by Mattie Burkert in 2018 from a 3.5-inch floppy disk sent to her …

The Right Answer: Intuition In Tutoring Sessions, Hunter E. Henrichsen

Tutor's Column

In a writing center, following intuition is important. Tutor insecurities, lack of experience, and misconceptions can lead students to deny that intuition. Tutors who learn to recognize that lack of experience can learn from sessions where that intuition is denied. Coworkers and other resources are important to building that intuition and helping to create effective, independent writers rather than effective papers.

A Science Writing Center As A Catalyst For Improving Undergraduate Writing Skills In The Sciences, Andrew J. Felton

Tutor's Column

Having earned a PhD in the sciences, I am keenly aware that writing skills are at the core of being a successful scientist. Undergraduate students in the sciences not only face the immediate demands of complex course material, but in many cases the prospect of a career in which writing skills can determine professional success. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of science course material, writing assignments, revisions, and feedback to students are given relatively little attention. The Utah State University Science Writing Center is unique platform in its ability to address this limitation; bringing together a diverse pool of …

Don’T Overlook The Power Of Praise, Andrea Whittier

Tutor's Column

Writing center tutors should prioritize the use of praise in sessions with each student, whether or not the student may respond the way the tutor expects. For some students, this brings energy to the session that fuels discussion about the paper, and for other students, this may function as a tool to show them the positive culture of the writing center.

"I Wanted Her Dead More Than Voldemort": Examining People's Hatred Of Dolores Umbridge, Jessica Griffeth

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This Plan B thesis explores the question: Why do audience members detest Dolores Umbridge so much? Dolores Umbridge is an incredibly hated woman in the Harry Potter series who has attracted attention from audiences, but Umbridge has not been studied fully by scholarship. When scholars do discuss Umbridge, they typically focus on her cruelty while ignoring her other characteristics. Looking at popular internet audience reactions to Umbridge, however, shows the complexities of Umbridge’s character by revealing what Louise Rosenblatt calls the “transaction” between the audience and the texts, and scholarship has ignored that “transaction.” Using quantitative and qualitative methods to …

"'The Grittiness Of Being Human' : Individualizing Sexual Expectations In Adichie's Novels", Madison Behrend Vaughn

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Critics of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novels identify her as a nationalist author, as representing the voices on the periphery, and as advocating for multiple voices and perspectives. Critics have also largely dismissed sexual experience as a factor in her representations and have regarded her graphic descriptions of intimacy as mere entertainment or as a means to provoke criticism. I will argue that Adichie does include many instances of sexual intimacy in her novels, not as an escape from the tough subjects that she details, but to express the effects of public problems on individuals. Ultimately, the complexity of sexual experience …

N: A Sea Monster Of A Research Project, Adrian Jay Thomson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Ever since time and the world began, dwarves have always fought cranes. Ever since ships set out on the northern sea, great sea monsters have risen to prey upon them. Such are the basics of life in medieval and Renaissance Scandinavia, Iceland, Scotland and Greenland, as detailed by Olaus Magnus' Description of the Northern Peoples (1555), its sea monster-heavy map, the Carta Marina (1539), and Abraham Ortelius' later map of Iceland, Islandia (1590).

I first learned of Olaus and Ortelius in the summer of 2013, and while drawing my own version of their sea monster maps a thought hit me: …

Examining The Usability Of Content In Canvas: Html Vs. Pdf, Danni Noyes

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The mission statement of Utah State University (USU) includes “serving the public through learning, discovery and engagement.” In order to engage the diverse 27,932 students (Fall 2018 headcount including regional campuses), USU produces accessible content. Although accessible content is available to USU’s students, it is presented as an alternative to the original product rather than as a product itself. Thus, students must seek out this alternative, accessible content in order to engage with it. This pilot study indicates that content in Canvas should be made accessible from the beginning of its creation as is specified by the Theories of Universal …

Sink Hollow Volume 7

Sink Hollow

This issue marks my last as both an undergraduate student and as Sink Hollow's Editor-in-Chief. I have been with this precious publication since I was a freshman, new and green in the creative writing world.

My time with Sink Hollow has been invaluable. It has given me a deep appreciation for the vulnerability of creators and writers alike who share their work with us. It is terrifying to not only bring your creativity into actuality, but to share it publicly for the world to see. I have sat back in awe through every submission period at the bravery of all …

140%: Helping Students With Reading Disabilities, Emily Joy Powell

Tutor's Column

Tutoring students with reading disabilities will take more than a simple knowledge of reading disabilities in general; it takes knowing how to ask specific questions and fighting against popular stereotypes to create a successful tutoring session. Studies show that one in five students have some type of reading disability. There are ways for tutors to make these students feel more comfortable and confident in their ability to write, however, these techniques must be practiced. While mastering these techniques can be profoundly beneficial for students with reading disabilities, they are valuable to apply in all tutoring sessions.

“All Right Stop, Collaborate, And Listen”: A Writing Center’S Role In Community Collaboration, Riley Anderton

Tutor's Column

Writing centers become inextricable parts of the community that surrounds them. Community ties allow writing centers the chance to nurture a love for writing outside of the confines of a university classroom. This column aims to explore the ways in which writing center tutors have the ability to cultivate practices of writing through engaging in community collaboration. The Utah State Writing Center has created a community collaboration known as Helicon West. Helicon West is an event in which members from the University and community have a chance to listen to writing as well as share their own during open mic …

Preparing To Perform: The Power Of Observations In Tutor Education, Jordan Forest

Tutor's Column

One powerful tool for further developing our education as writing tutors is peer observations. Observations give us the opportunity to develop new skills and— as one surveyed tutor puts it— add to our toolbox. In order to benefit from observations, we can see to ask questions in a way that provokes further knowledge and insight. Additionally, we can utilize the time after a session in order to ask specific questions to the peer we observed. Through these processes, our own tutoring skills and knowledge can be expanded.

Professionalism In The Writing Center: Combining Compassion And Composition, Carrigan Price

Tutor's Column

Much is demanded from peer tutors if they are to be perceived as professionals; they must be a listening ear, a helping hand, and an expert writer in order to effectively help students. However, tutors’ behavior must adapt to each individual student, paper, and session. Truly professional tutors ignore traditional definitions of professionalism in favor of providing students the help and advice they most need. Tutors need to pay attention to students’ initial behavior, students’ body language throughout the session, and their own feelings of comfort or discomfort in order to appropriately react to the private and personal content of …

Balancing Give-And-Take In Tutoring, Stephanie Fielding

Tutor's Column

Satisfaction in a session increases for both sides when a tutor uses active listening as the mediator between student participation and tutor guidance. Part of the session needs to be devoted to hearing the student’s concerns, which makes the student feel validated. However, at appropriate times, the tutor also needs to provide the student with feedback, and active listening contributes to the tutor’s knowledge of what to say to the student. Active listening can also help diffuse tense tutoring situations.

How Not To Panic In The Face Of Panic, Emily Abel

Tutor's Column

While tutors may not interact daily with students who have reached a point of panic, they should be prepared to handle these potentially precarious situations. A student who is truly at the end of their rope likely needs specific tutoring techniques not always focused on in other sessions. Tutors have the potential to be a turning point in a stressed student’s life, if they have taken the time to learn how. This essay equips tutors with a strategic plan, including specific phrases, to coax a student out of their panic and into state of confidence.